WRITING THE PROPER QUERY

So you thought writing the novel was hard? Wait till you tackle your first query letter. In one page of text you have to get the prospect so excited to read your work that they can't wait to get their hands on the manuscript. You have to convince this person that you are the only writer in the world who could possibly do this subject matter justice. In approximately 200 words you must get an agent or an editor to practically beg to see your manuscript. And you have to do it without either bragging about yourself or making inflated claims about the quality of your work. The work must speak for itself, yet you must get the prospect to read your work before it can do that.

What then should the query letter say? That's up to you. But rather than spend a lot of time and space talking about what you should do, I've decided to simply post two different styles of query that resulted in manuscripts being requested. One of the queries was written with the intent of sending through the mails, while the other was formatted to be an email query. Both resulted in several requests for the manuscript and the eventual signing of an agent.